19 August 2009

Add to packing list: knee brace

Here's a tip: if you want to make your travels abroad really interesting, a great way to achieve that goal is to become hobbled unexpectedly. And a great way to achieve that is to go in-line skating two days before you depart and wipe out spectacularly. Take particular care to land hard on your knee so that it's nicely bloody and painful (also be sure to choose a pedestrian-filled area for your wipe-out, so that you have a large audience to whom you can demonstrate your commitment to making your travels interesting).

Ow.*

24 hours until departure. Am I all packed? Nope. Am I panicking? Astonishingly, not really. I was for the last week, but now, as the moment approaches, I feel oddly prepared.

(Of course, my whole point with this trip is to be willfully unprepared. The main challenge has not been planning so much as forcing myself, against my better judgment, natural tendency/preference, and lingering anxieties about this unwise methodology, to not plan anything.)

* I would just like to note, for the record, that I am an avid and more-than-able skater, and this is just the second time I have wiped out, ever.

My first book was Europe on Five Wrong Turns a Day(Perigee Books/Penguin, 2012), a travel memoir about my attempt to tour Europe guided only by a 1963 copy of the guidebook Europe on Five Dollars a Day. This blog has its roots in that trip, and if you dig back to the 2009 archives, you'll find my posts from the road.

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